This may have been discussed before (there's a blogpost on Darktable's home page describing the various issues regarding running the software on a 32-bit system), but I have a specific issue that I haven't been able to find any information about, so I'm trying my luck here.

The developers make clear that there are lots of problems associated with running the program on a 32-bit system. I too am experiencing some of this (for instance I am not able to see thumbnails of photos).

But the most annoying issue for me by far seems to have nothing to do with my system, but rather a feature (possibly a bug?) of the program. Every time I open a new image or switch between lightroom/darkroom/other I get the same warning message:

So in a typical 30 minute session of editing photos, I'll have to confirm my desire to suffer at least 15-20 times. Has anyone else experienced this when running the program on a 32-bit computer?

Yes. I wouldn't have used the 32-bit version unless I had to. My current laptop was bought in 2012, it ran the latest version of Lightroom until recently with no other "suffering" than slow processing (which I can live with). Until I buy a new computer I guess I'm stuck with RawTherapee, unless I go back to Windows.

This thread is turning out to be somewhat of an embarrassment, although it's well worth it considering the result. My cpu is indeed 64bit. Can't believe how I managed to conclude it was 32-bit when I formated it some weeks ago.. Will format my computer and install the 64-bit version of darktable, then...

I tried to change it from false to true and save the file, but the message still appears as before upon restart.

You have to close dt, then edit the file and only after that is done you may start dt again. If you edit the config while darktable is running you are wasting your time – when shutting down darktable overwrites that file again.